


The Men Who Knew

by gonfalonier



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Cannibalism (Mentioned), Canonical Character Death, Menstruation, Mentions of Sex, Multi, Trans Character, Transphobia, Violence, complicated adult emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23110486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonfalonier/pseuds/gonfalonier
Summary: Every time he sets out, Sol knows there'll be men who need to know, and men who come to know.  On this expedition, he's hoping to keep both of those numbers to a bone-bare minimum.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 70





	1. 1. Dr. Alexander McDonald, Assistant Surgeon, HMS Terror

**Author's Note:**

> might gotta bump the rating up in a few. love you guys.

There was no physical exam required for the Royal Marines called to serve on Franklin’s expedition to the norwest: A sign, to Solomon, that they were desperate for men, but he didn’t speak of this to any of his mates. Instead, while they were still in port, he studied _Terror_ ’s muster roll to learn the names of the doctors, his way of casting runes for a sign that there might be a friendly, discreet man of help.

Sol begins his cycle the fucking day they loose their moors. “For Christ’s fucking sake,” he mutters when he goes to dab away the clinging drops of piss and draws back a spotting of blood. In frustration he jams the cloth up his damnable hole and gives himself a hard scratch on the thigh, punishment to his body for being nothing but an inconvenience. He has not had time to feel out either of this ship’s surgeons, nor even fancied a nod toward a soul on the flagship _Erebus_ , and so that first night he simply suffers and bleeds. What else is a Royal Marine, after all, conscripted to do?

In the morning, the cramping is unbearable, but the fresh air on the main deck helps. They are not yet into the cold and ice, which he knows will only make his internal shredding feel that much worse when it comes about each month. “You don’t look well at all, sir,” Bill Heather says to him, but Sol gives him a smile. They’ve known each other years, even before he was able to coax Bill into the RMs. “Well enough to have your sister,” Sol shoots back. “And your father besides.” They both laugh, elbow each other, and then move on with their watch.

Three days later, he thinks the blood has passed -- it usually does after this many days, or even two, before tapering into something grey and rust-colored, considerably less uncomfortable -- but he’s at the mirror in the RM quarters trimming his sorry little mustache when young Wilkes makes a sound of alarm. “Sergeant,” he says, “are you injured?” Sol follows the man’s eyes down to where a fat, dark bit of blood, like a leech, has oozed down to the cuff of his trouser and revealed itself on the instep of his bare foot. He mutters a swear and tries to wave Wilkes away, but the young man insists Sol go to the sick bay. “It don’t look healthy, sir, it don’t look like regular blood, like.” As a man, Sol wants to tell the lad to fuck off and mind himself; as a leader, he knows he’s got to set an example. He goes to see the medic.

Sol steels himself at the curtain leading to the sickroom, his tongue pushing against his back tooth. He’s practiced, under his breath, a few different greetings for Dr. Peddie, a few different ways to go about addressing the issue. _The issue at hand_ , he wants to say, to sound quite serious, as though he and the surgeon are equals. _The issue at hand...The matter I’m currently…_ He won’t say he’s vexed, although he is. He clears his throat and pulls the curtain aside.

“Dr. Peddie, good afternoon, I’m --”

“Dr. Peddie isn’t in, lad,” says the man who is crouched on the floor of the bay. He’s tending to the cracked heel of a midshipman whose name Sol doesn’t know. “So sit on your hands a moment and I’ll see to you.” That heel does look quite dire, for as little time as they’ve been asea.

Solomon finds he doesn’t want to use the same stiff language with Dr. McDonald that he’d planned for the ships chief surgeon. It could be down to the further squigs of blood that have lurched free from the leg-holes of his smalls. Something is wrong. Once he and the doctor are alone, Sol crowds in very close until he’s towering over McDonald, and he says, “Sir, I need to know that you’re a man of great discretion, and that if you are not, my rifle and I will see to it that you become that way.”

To which Dr. McDonald replies mildly, “Sergeant Tozer, you are bleeding.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you injured?”

“No, I am not.”

“I see.”

Dr. McDonald is not restrained, and so he steps around Sol and bustles out of the room for a moment to exchange words with the young men chatting just on the other side of the curtain, and soon all is silent but for the creak of the ship’s wood against the waves.

“You’re going to have to let me see,” McDonald says. “I know you don’t want to. And I have no stirrups here, either, for your ease. I’ll need you to help me, Sergeant.”

Sol grinds his teeth. “All right.” He only strips himself from the waist down, and only to his smalls, now ruined with blood. It’s slithered down his leg in a long red inlet. Christ.

“Go on,” the doctor prods gently.

“I flew in here without resistance,” he counters. “What’s to stop someone else from doing the same.”

McDonald looks at him with an expression that isn’t a smile but isn’t not. “Nothing, lad. We’ll need to work quickly.”

“Fuck it.” So he does work quickly indeed.

They both find it easiest to investigate with Sol bent over the examining table and McDonald knelt behind him. For the sake of propriety the doctor drapes a canvas over himself and Sol’s back end, giving instead the absurd illusion of one man using another as a camera. Beneath the canvas, McDonald has a careful touch, but this is still a raw humiliation. He washes Sol’s parts and gently tugs him open to poke at his insides. It does not feel good.

“What’s to be done, doctor?” he asks impatiently.

“Nothing,” comes the muffled answer. Then, more clearly, when McDonald removes himself from the canvas, “Nothing, son. It’s natural. A bit thick, perhaps, from the salt. And the tipping of us on the sea,” he gestures a wave with his hand, “has likely set your womb to jostle as well. But it has not detached, nor gone wandering. You’re simply adjusting.”

Solomon stands, wraps his lower half in the canvas, and exhales in relief, but all the same: “Never had to adjust before. Ain’t my first time to sea.”

The doctor says, “I’d mark it up to age, my lad, and nothing more.” It sounds like an apology, but it makes Sol smile. He’ll chew a while on that once this emergency has passed.

McDonald makes quick work of fixing a small box of supplies: some bandage squares; flannel strips; and some tufts of sheep’s wool -- “For the worst of it.” He instructs Solomon to come see him for help with the cramping, and that if he himself isn’t at hand then Dr. Peddie will be aware that Sgt. Tozer has a recurring stomach complaint.

“I suppose you’re lucky,” the doctor says to him at last.

“In what way -- In what possible way in this damnable world am I lucky, sir?”

Sol is dressed again, albeit without his smallclothes, which have joined a pile of rags destined for the incinerator. Dr. McDonald gestures toward Sol’s trousers and says, “Uniform’s red.”

Solomon fights his laugh for only a moment before it bursts out of him at volume. The doctor grins at him and tells him to get out.

When he returns to his quarters, his men are looking at him with concern, as though they’ve all heard he’s bleeding to death. With no effort at all, he tells them it was no more than a burst pile. They leave him be after that.

And so: Dr. Alexander McDonald is the first of the expedition to know. In Sol’s experience, the sawbones usually is.


	2. 2.  Mr. Thomas Blanky, Ice Master, HMS Terror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some sex mentioned in this one

The first time on this expedition that Sol is unwittingly found out, it’s on the seat. Of all the fucking places.

Solomon’s engineered a few ways to avoid just this sort of thing. He’s jiggered together some devices to let him piss standing up; he’s learned how to adjust his coat just so to shadow his lap when he’s having a shit (the only time at sea a man truly has any peace). But now and then, and when it’s middle watch and nothing’s happening, he just wants to sit in the quiet with none to see him. There’s a window in the head that’s letting in the unencumbered moonlight, and maybe Solomon just wants to share a moment with that one beam. What a tender thought.

He doesn’t realize his eyes have closed until a sound rousts him and sends him to his feet, groping for his rifle.

“Steady now,” comes a voice from a few paces ahead. As his eyes adjust to the moonlit dark, as his mind adjusts to wakefulness, he’s able to divine the shape of a man in the privy’s doorway. Sol makes a fuzzled sound, not understanding: Is this in fact a dream?

“Trousers, my boy.”

Ah. It’s not. And the voice in the doorway filters into his understanding at last, leading him to hurry all the more. He leans his gun back in its place against the wall and sets about adjusting his clothes. He is fully exposed in the moonlight; there is no way this blasted -- damned and fucked and fucking blasted -- old man could not have seen him for what he is.

Once Sol is fastened away, he and Blanky regard each other in silence. Mr. Blanky is the first to break it. “Who else knows, lad?”

“That I sleep on watch, sir?”

Blanky taps the side of his nose and replies, “Clever man.”

“McDonald,” Sol replies after a moment. The rear of his jaw feels cold with nerves. “I’d hoped he’d be the only one, sir.”

“Aye, he can be. If that’s what you want, he can be the only one. He’ll not protect you from harm, however, and I’m in a position to do that.”

That pulls a scoff from Solomon. “Harm? Sir, I’m a Royal Marine. Haven’t earned my rank by being protected.” In fact, now he thinks about it, that’s a right fucked thing for the old man to say. Sol takes a step forward; his face is caught in the moonbeam just before the light is obscured by a bank of clouds. “Her fucking Majesty press-ganged my men and me, plus Bryant and his men besides, onto these damned boats to protect your sorry hides from harm.”

He’s expecting a _see here_ from Old Tom. Maybe a _mind yourself_ or some threat of the lash. Instead, Mr. Blanky only nods and says, “Aye, so she did.” He gives Sol a nod. “Nothing was meant by it. You’re a capable seaman, as are we all.”

“Most of us,” Sol ventures, with a conspiratorial smile that Blanky returns.

Solomon’s been down here a while. He’ll be expected back on deck soon to finish out the watch. The clouds pass on to reveal the mother-moon again, and the light finds Mr. Blanky gazing directly at Sol, so Sol gazes right back. As if connected by a string, they each take a simultaneous step forward, closing the distance between them. Sol is no longer afraid, even when the clouds chug by and the small cabin goes dark once more.

Old Tom asks, “You said McDonald knows?”

“I did.”

“Suppose that’s wise. But no one else? Not even your Corporal?”

“I trust him with everything else. Don’t need him worrying himself about me.”

“The Captain?”

Sol scoffs. They’re close enough now that he can see Blanky’s eyes in the dark. There’s hunger there, a hunger Sol recognizes both in other men and in himself. Christ, it’s only been six months at sea, surely the old man isn’t missing cunt so terribly already. Sol wants to say to him, _Pace yourself, y’dog_.

“And McDonald,” says Mr. Blanky. “Is he seeing to you?”

Shrewd old bastard. Old goat. “He takes care about my pain, sir. Is that what you mean?”

Blanky’s mouth splits into a grin. “Of course it is, lad.” And then, more carefully, “You’ll not be needing my services, then, will you.”

Services, indeed. Sol’s heard the rumors, hasn’t he, about the services Blanky provides to the other men on the ship. The boys in the mess gossip terribly and each swear to Christ that they’ve committed crimes and sins with the Ice Master that strain the imagination. Perhaps, now, not such a strain. Not so difficult to see it.

Sol’s never been fucked, not in his whole life, and nor has he done the fucking. When he and his men visit the brothels on shore, even then Sol’s careful not to let on. He never shares a woman with his men, never opts for public frivolity. Instead he prefers to work behind a closed door, where he can make a good meal of a woman’s cunny, and her arse too if she’s well clean, bring her off time after time until she’s pleading with him to stop before she’s too raw to walk. Only on a handful of occasions has he allowed a woman to undress him completely and give in return. They’ve all been very kind to him; not an ugly word from one; and in the end, once he’s relaxed a bit, he’s quite enjoyed himself. No harm, he thinks, in enjoying oneself.

“Could be,” Solomon says after a spell of silence. He takes a step closer to Blanky, so if the old man were taller they’d be nose-to-nose. “Could be, not right now. Could be later on. A night when the watch isn’t mine, and we aren’t in the shithouse. Could be then, I’ll have need of your seeing-to. Sir.”

Blanky replies, “I see,” and the words roll about in the chilly air between them. Solomon considers a kiss. Instead he raises his hand to Mr. Blanky’s cheek and thumbs over the skin there, the stubble that’s sure to grow in thick and sturdy as their journey progresses. Thomas turns into the touch and presses his lips right on the mound of Sol’s thumb, ending the kiss with a licentious little suck. It makes Solomon throb. Blanky holds Sol’s hand against his cheek and says to him, “Never hesitate, Sergeant, to take advantage of an officer’s expertise.”

“Very wise. Wise words, sir. Thank you.”

“Back to your watch, now. They’ll think you’ve abandoned them.”

“Or fallen in.”

They share a laugh at that. One more long gaze in the light of the moon, and then they part.

The way Sol’s experienced it, being found out can break a few ways. This is one way -- it’s unusual, but he can’t say he minds. There’s a number of sailors, now on other ships in other parts of the world, of whose expertise Sol’s availed himself. Then there are the men who don’t care at all, the men like Dr. McDonald. He’d much rather things go one of these ways than the way that ends with the ship losing a member of her crew -- a cook, perhaps, or a blacksmith -- to a terrible accident that sends him overboard. There’s a number of sailors, too, now in the bellies of sharks and great eels, who would tell that tale if they could.

Sol has never been fucked. He simply refuses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wash your fucking hands solomon


	3. 3.  Harry D.S. Goodsir, Assistant Surgeon, HMS Erebus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time to earn that cannibalism (mentioned) tag and bump this bad boy up outta the Teen Zone

It’s not like everything was going so well, but losing three doctors in the carnival fires is still a cruel blow. All those men, three doctors, and good Bill besides. Trampled, burnt, mutilated: Solomon survived, but he still relates.

Out on the ice, walking out, Sol finds himself missing the creaking wood of the ships -- though not as much as he misses the lapping waves of unfrozen water. What he would give for a swim about now. 

He would give even more, whatever he has left, to be back in the care of Dr. McDonald. A brisk touch that never lingered; practical knowledge of complaints the other men would never suffer; alongside candid good humor and a soft voice that didn’t carry. The other surgeons on either ship, he never countenanced. Stanley struck him as a mighty prig, Peddie never seemed to be available, and Goodsir -- well. A scientist Goodsir may be, and a linguist too, but his approach to doctoring leans heavy on the use of nasty coca solutions, morphia, palliative care rather than remedies: Just look how much good he did for poor Jacko. Goodsir seems, to Solomon, a resigned man, not one for forward thinking. Still. Walking on the ice has brought about a fresh boldness in Dr. Goodsir, and Cornelius is right that he’d make a valuable addition to their effort (which is not a mutiny, Sol tells himself, it’s not, but rather it’s a disagreement in perspective). 

And setting those assets aside -- the detriments, too -- Goodsir’s the only doctor they have left. Solomon needs to ingratiate himself: He’s in need of the company, after all. Now that Mr. Blanky is preoccupied with navigation and crew unity, and with his fraying false leg, Sol’s lost him as a comrade. No one else here on the ice who lives, knows, and Sol isn’t wanting to wait until a medical complaint arises to test the sensibilities of another man. Therefore, hello to Henry. It is Henry, isn’t it? Henry? Harry. Hanry. Harry, yes, Dr. Harry Goodsir, who isn’t a doctor at all but playacts one convincingly, which is all Solomon will need until they reach Fort Resolution and bring all of this misery to account.

(Sol would like to see Crozier hanged when that day comes, he thinks. Crozier, and the eremitical Irving, whom Solomon’s seen through from the moment of clapping eyes on one another. The only way he imagines their St. John could even manage a cockstand is at the end of a rope, surely one of this world’s most satisfying indignities.)

With no guarantee of survival, indeed no guarantee of time, Solomon simply tells Harry outright after finding an excuse to see him alone. The response he receives is quintessential Goodsir, in both its academic tone -- “Ah, I’ve heard of this!” -- and its kindness. Sol’s never once doubted Goodsir’s sincerity, but rather how much of it he himself could stand in one go. In the course of their conversation, Harry says things to him such as, “It must be horribly lonely for you,” and, “a burden shared is a burden lightened, Sergeant.” Well-meaning but no help at all. Harry ends their meeting with a promise of determination: “Sergeant, I will look after you.”

He does, at that. They confer regularly, in fact, privately in the surgery tent, and not strictly on subjects relevant to medicine. Harry is not his lover, nor even a royal brother-in-arms, and yet Solomon finds himself spilling from the mouth the full circumstances of his life, from birth to docks to sea to the present ice. Goodsir listens, hums acknowledgements; his brow pinches and smooths again, concerned, relieved. Solomon’s life really is a harrowing tale, usually disbursed as disjointed, carefully curated anecdotes. He’s pleased to have found, at the edge of the world, someone who’s so keen to hear it in full.

Later, Sol betrays him and does not regret it. He is going to survive, and he will ensure Harry’s survival as well, whatever the cost, because Sol can’t be without a doctor. Tension grows and grows between the two of them as thick and hateful as the ice.

Later still, when Harry, neither lover nor brother, is no longer friend, doctor, nor anything at all; when he is dead; when he is supper, Sol does not eat of him. 

Billy, he ate, and ate happily. He laughed and drank over Gibson’s meat, he was the one to break the solemn mood around the table. It was an experience so exhilarating that it led Sol to hump off against the heel of his hand once he was back in his tent, disregarding Des Voeux’s disgusted scoffs.

Staring down, however, at Goodsir’s carved flesh, Sol finds that while he’s starving, he isn’t hungry. Such a waste, this seems. Here they’ve been trying to haul the man forward into the future, and what does Harry do but fall backward into the predictable arms of death. Disappointing. Cornelius will want to keep Goodsir mostly intact, a warning to any of the original crew who circle around this direction, and so Sol hopes Hickey will be magnanimous and let him have some salted bits of the dog instead.

For a moment, though, he considers, as ugly gusts of wind riffle Harry’s beard, the curls on his head, the lashes of his empty eyes: _If I do eat you, sir, carve you and eat you, will I gain my secrets back? Will they be mine again?_ He rests his fingertips on Harry’s shoulder, just above where one of the men has sheared away a serving of flesh, and says to him, “No. No, you can keep them. I don’t want them anymore.”


	4. 4.  Cornelius Hickey (alias), Caulker’s Mate, HMS Terror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> added some tags, please review them. sorry @ goodsir for making his chapter under 1k while hickey's is 3500

Solomon reckons he has a certain hardiness that’s protected him from the scurvy setting in among the other men, perhaps a blessed circumstance of his birth. Himself, Cornelius, and Crozier, they all seem to be immune. Perhaps they’re men like him, Sol thinks, and they too have been receiving treatments on the sly throughout the journey. 

Crozier, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn about: A softness in the face, an awkward gait, a certain break in his voice when he attempts to maintain his composure. When Sol and Mr. Morfin showed the wreckage of the rescue party to Crozier and Captain Fitzjames, it was Crozier who leapt on the opportunity to make it a secret. He’ll sing the secrets of others like a lark, but has no desire to have his own revealed, no desire to answer to his own sins. Perhaps he’s waiting for death to take him so he may reap his full reward in hell. Perhaps Solomon will be there to see him do so.

Cornelius, however; it seems unlikely that he and Solomon are cousins. The signs are there: Cornelius is a scanty little thing, and the mutilations he inflicted on Lt. Irving carried the smell of a particular kind of resentment Sol knows well. But Hickey’s honesty gives him away as a man in classical form and nature. He fears nothing; he stands and confesses, safe in the knowledge that he won’t face any consequence he can’t survive. The lash? A mother’s kiss, when compared to the fate Sol knows he himself would answer to if his body were laid bare before a court martial. Cornelius has now even evaded the noose, and as the leader of their sectarian band he has shown death and danger his arse at every opportunity, and it seems he’s shown it doubly well to scurvy.

It could be, Sol reckons, that he and Crozier and dear Cornelius have simply gotten lucky. He reckons this until he wakes in the night swallowing blood from a crevice in his teeth. “Damn. Damn and fucking blast.”

He keeps it hidden as best he can. His eyes begin to falter, but the spyglass helps. A bruise blooms on his knee, one that he can feel but refuses to undress in order to examine. Instead, he hauls, drinks, chats with the men, as though this were a humdrum holiday. As though survival were still meaty and voluptuous and yielding in their grasp. He confers with Cornelius on matters of navigation, hunting, scouting, keeping watch for the creature, and finds him to be good company, good enough to forget the illness for a while over a candle and a bit of chocolate. They don’t reminisce about men lost on the journey, or even about their lives back in England, a place which can no longer be called their home. Instead they fantasize together about revenge at Fort Resolution, after which they will both contentedly die.

“Sergeant Tozer,” Hickey says to him, “I’d quite like to die by your hand.” His smile is impish, coy, and in the candlelight the proposition sounds indecent.

“Would you, now.”

“I would. I’ve often thought of allowing you to run me through.”

That pulls a grin out of Sol, the first in a couple of days. “Naughty boy,” he chides. They regard each other hungrily in the near-dark. Since losing Mr. Blanky to Crozier’s lost cause (and, likely, to Crozier’s prick-starved Irish fishmouth), Sol’s been sorely missing those private attentions. The Ice Master, he had proclivities Cornelius surely doesn’t share. Cunt holds no thrall for Mr. Hickey, not even a man’s. He wouldn’t find pleasure in licking into Solomon the way Old Tom did, snuffling about as though he were a truffle pig. Blanky took care to suckle at that tender spot right at the top, called it’s Sol’s prick, which was much appreciated. Sol glances now at Hickey’s thin and crooked mouth and decides that even if Cornelius weren’t immediately repulsed at the sight of his body, the sight of him as a man, there would be no flattering talk of good lad or a handsome prick, indeed. And anyhow, as he adds to Hickey, “I’m told you prefer to do the running.”

“Oh? Who by?”

“You’re as wicked a gossip as any, Mr. Hickey. You should know how the men like to talk.”

Cornelius smiles at him, mild as a lamb. “You have me there, Sergeant. Yet, I never heard a word of scuttle about you. Good or ill, in fact. Which has left me to only guess at your predilections.”

When Cornelius holds out his cigarette in offer, Solomon takes it and drags back a thoughtful puff. It tickles him to think what this little commander has imagined with regard to a frolic. Hickey surely fancies himself a satyr, a crafty faun who could seduce even the Christchild into sodomy, and so a ranking Marine must seem to make an easy meal. After a long silence, full of expectation, he says to Hickey, “And what have you guessed, after all of this?”

The man plucks his cigarette back with two fingers and gestures with it as he answers. “The way I see it, you Marines, you go where you’re told. You don’t get a choice. And see, I wonder if that isn’t part of the appeal for you -- you, in particular. I wonder if you find your pleasure in submitting to an authority.”

“Were that so, why wouldn’t I stay with Mr. Crozier, then? A ranked authority.”

“Because,” Hickey says with triumph, “you’re a smart one, Sergeant. You saw that he wasn’t a leader, not a real one. Orders from him? Orders, fuck. If he ever was a Captain, he no longer deserves the stripes.” He’s growing exercised now. Sol only finds it diverting, no more or less alarming than anything else Cornelius has done on this journey. After all, once one’s eaten of a man, where is there any further depth? “Sergeant Tozer, that man, who we have called Captain for these years at sea, that man could nary order the fucking sun to shine at midday.”

“You don’t think so, Cornelius?”

“Much less order a man, a man of your stature, your heighth and breadth and command, order you to your knees to act the cocksucker.”

“But you’re wagering that you could.”

Oh, it’s unkind to encourage him, but Sol likes to see the way he transports himself with his own aggrandizement. The way his eyes narrow to slits and his nostrils flare as he envisions himself balancing the globe entire on the head of his prick.

Hickey says, “I could, and I have.”

“You could order me? A man of my stature?” Smiles play across the cracked lips of both men. “A man of my heighth and breadth, Mr. Hickey?”

“Shall we call the men out, Sergeant, and let them see how I could?”

“You call me Sergeant again and again. Would you not have me call you Captain?”

Cornelius gnarrs out a negative. His eyes are shining in the candlelight, reflecting all the sky outside the canvas tent. “There is no word yet, Solomon, for the rank that I’ve achieved.”

As their words have grown heady, the distance between them has closed. Solomon now locks the closure with a kiss. The ridges of their freeze-chapped lips slot together tongue-and-groove, and when they lick at one another’s mouths they each hiss at the sting and the taste of blood. Their whiskers rasp against each other as they move their mouths. Sol’s managed to grow a respectable beard on this journey. He hasn’t been successful in warmer climes, but he reckons the icy air has stimulated him, and though the hairs are fine they’re also many, much more than his usual dusting of fuzz, and when Cornelius holds Sol’s face in his woolen gloves there is a glow in the tent that none could attribute to the lantern flame.

For all that Mr. Hickey is a foolish, short-arsed princeling, he isn’t far off in his estimation of Solomon’s desires. Sol certainly doesn’t mind being ordered about, bossed with a sharp command or guided with a hand gripping the back of his neck. Once he’s given a task, he doesn’t consider it complete until he’s been rewarded with a word of praise. If his result doesn’t pass muster, then he relishes the punishment of a dressing-down. (The lash, he’s never been assigned, neither to receive it nor to throw it to another man. He doesn’t know whether to be grateful. As he witnessed, with the other men, Hickey receiving his punishment and Crozier’s lusty calls for more strokes, more and more, he’d felt a throb of envy.) It could be that Hickey’s read him more closely than he thought the man capable.

Small, fine hands are roaming his shoulders now, his arms, too, through his gansey. It’s good to be touched again, even by hands such as these. The joints in Sol’s wrist protest when Cornelius squeezes him there. “I’ll bruise,” he mutters into Hickey’s mouth.

Hickey pulls away and says to him, “So you’ll bruise.” He keeps a grip on Solomon’s wrist but gestures to his chest. “Take this off. I’ll see you.”

“Too cold. Too cold for that.”

“Later, then. When I’ve warmed you up proper.”

Sly fox. There is no refusal with this man, only deferral. Perhaps when the moment comes, when Sol really is warmed up and ready, it won’t be such a terrible thing to reveal.

They kiss again with renewed fervor, and in their rush Solomon knocks the lantern over and snuffs it out. They smile together, less painful now that their mouths are pliable, though Sol can still feel his teeth shift when they’re touched by Hickey’s tongue. They’re as close as they’ve ever been, chest-to-chest, and Hickey’s hands are on his waist, tugging at the hem of his jumper. “I’ll see you,” he says again between panting breaths. “I’ll command you.”

“Not yet. Please, Cornelius. Not just yet.”

Moving like this, writhing together, each in search of the upper hand, it’s unbearably painful. Sol’s spine feels as though each bone is made of the sharp stones outside. He waits and waits for the pleasure of the act to overwhelm any other feeling, but the sparks of discomfort in his hips and knees conspire to deny him this. When he gasps into Hickey’s mouth it isn’t for want of more sensation.

Undeterred by Sol’s interference, Cornelius moves his hand up under the gansey to palm all along his chest, and that’s when Solomon finally pulls away and scrambles to stand up. He begins to say, “I have said --” but he’s stopped when, in the faint light filtering between the stitches of the tent, he sees Cornelius rub his fingers together, then bring them to his lips to taste. He smiles, showing his strong, white teeth in the dark. His eyes are glittering when he turns his face to Solomon and says, “Sergeant, you’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing. I’ll retire. We’ll --” What’s a proper word? “Reconvene in the morning.”

“No, I insist. Let’s get you to the doctor’s tent.” Hickey stands and takes Solomon by the arm. His grip is tight enough that Sol knows he’s been found out. Maybe not entirely, maybe Cornelius hasn’t pieced together the full account, but enough. There is no such thing as being found out only halfway. “I’ll see you mended, Sergeant, seeing as I’m the one who roughed you so terribly.”

Sol lets himself be pushed across the shales. He’s already formulating a way to kill Cornelius without marking his own death as well.

There’s no light in Goodsir’s place but the man is not asleep. He’s sitting up in the darkness -- queer fellow that he is -- and he only makes a weary sound when Cornelius pushes through the doorflaps of the tent. Hickey releases Sol by pushing him to the floor.

“Our Marine needs tending to, Dr. Goodsir. There’s something very wrong with him.”

The doctor’s already making to light a grease lamp. Solomon says, “I’d prefer it be in private.”

“Bugger what you prefer,” barks Cornelius, and then two fingers are pushing into the joint between Sol’s shoulders and his neck, immobilizing him with pain.

Goodsir hasn’t even waved out the match in his hand before he startles back at the vision Sol makes. There in the lamplight, Solomon can look down and see the streak of blood staining the chest of his gansey and spreading up toward the collar. “Take this off,” says Goodsir. “Please, Sergeant. I need to see what’s the matter.”

“Take it off,” Cornelius echoes. “You heard our doctor.”

Goodsir is kneeling before him and regarding him earnestly. They were friends, once. Solomon says to him, “Help me,” and together they ease him out of his jumper. The smell of blood in the room is as thick and nasty as the day Sol received the wound. He can’t bring himself to survey it.

Goodsir says solemnly, “It has reopened, just as I feared.”

“How long have you known, Sergeant?” Hickey demands, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead he asks of the doctor, “How long has this man been ill? He’s been hauling all this time, so how long has he been hiding this from me?” And then, to Solomon, “What else have you kept hidden? You’re my second, Sergeant, you’re meant to tell me all.”

“Be quiet, Mr. Hickey.” Dr. Goodsir has not raised his voice. “None of that matters now. Leave us, and let me work.”

“I’ll not, I think. Do your,” Cornelius gestures as though he’s conjuring a spell, “but I’ll be here to see it.”

“Very well. But quietly. I’ll need to concentrate.”

Concentration, Solomon currently has in short supply. His body is trying in vain to heal itself, and the twining smells of blood and lamp oil are making his stomach churn. He can hear himself laughing, however, over the rush of panic in his ears. He’s laughing with tears in his eyes, as mad as poor, soulless Mr. Collins.

Goodsir is quiet as he prods at Sol’s chest. Hickey is quiet as he seethes standing beside him. Solomon will not be quiet. He cannot. “Mr. Hickey,” he says, leaning his head back to look the man in the face, “you are a true fool. A true fucking fool. A more fucking cankerous fool there has never been.” The doctor makes a move to silence him, but Solomon waves him off. The pain in his chest is searing. “And more the fool I for thinking you were not an utter mad fool.” He hiccups another laugh while Cornelius looks down at him mildly, smiling himself. “You know nothing of the world, or the sea, or men, or anything else in all creation. We have been beset by hell, man. There is a monster killing us all; we have survived an arson, and we have mutinied, all so we may, what? Drag a boat across the land until we drop stone dead.” Another flurry of sobbing laughs. Goodsir is weeping now, too. Hickey is cupping Solomon’s chin in his hand. “And you! You are driven to anger -- by a bit of scurvy? Is that all?”

“Solomon, I must insist.”

“Come here, Mr. Hickey,” he continues over Goodsir’s objections. “Come here. Doctor, move over, I want Cornelius to see me. He’s been wanting to see me, let him see me.”

With his lips tight in disapproval, Goodsir beckons Hickey over to him, but he himself does not move. Cornelius crouches in front of Sol in the lamplight and says, “I must say, Sergeant, this bit of scurvy has you in a state.” He reaches out and nudges his finger through a furrow where the long wound has split apart. It only makes Sol laugh again, incapable of anything else.

“I have been keeping secrets from you, Cornelius. I have, I confess it.”

“I forgive you, Sergeant. I do. But you must tell me everything now. Make your confession to me.” With his finger still in the bloody split, Hickey leans in and kisses him again. This time, Solomon pulls away. He takes Hickey by the wrist and pushes his hand flat against the laceration on his chest.

“I confess,” he says, “that I’ve been in thrall to a fool.” His face is rent by a smile. “I had tits, Cornelius. You complete fucking ox. I had tits,” he uses Hickey’s hand to slap his bloody chest, “right here. Great conical things that sprouted when I’d just learned I wanted to go to sea. I tried pushing them down to hide them but they just kept growing, and so I picked pockets til I could pay a barber to slice them off. Near twenty years I’ve been telling a tale of being mauled by a tiger, when it was just a drunken old whoreson down Bold Street.”

Before him, Hickey’s eyes have narrowed. He doesn’t speak -- blissfully -- so Sol continues, “You’re prepared to take arms against me for keeping an illness from you, Cornelius! You’re a fool. You’re asking for my confession because you want the whole of me. You’d like to own me the way you owned young Mr. Gibson until we split him into many pieces and ate him up.” Solomon swipes up a bit of fresh blood from his chest with his thumb so he can paint it under each of Hickey’s eyes. “You cannot have me that way. You’ll never have the whole of me.” He drops his arm and slumps, weak. “I should have never followed you.”

After that, silence fills the tent until Solomon is sure the camp can see it billowing out of the doorflaps like coal smoke. Mr. Hickey contemplates with his face and hand sullied with blood. Solomon does not like the smile he smiles when he finally smiles.

“You,” Hickey says to him. He wags a bloodstained finger. “You’re a crafty little bitch.” Goodsir, affronted, attempts to overpower Cornelius but is easily knocked away. Hickey’s hand darts out between Sol’s legs to feel for a set of stones and, finding none, laughs. “I’m impressed, Sergeant. Well. Not Sergeant anymore, are you.”

Sol doesn’t answer. This isn’t the first man, nor even the most remarkable, to level that charge.

Hickey says, “I’m impressed, miss. Very modern, isn’t it, a woman among the ranks.” Then to Dr. Goodsir, “Stitch her up. Nothing’s changed. She’ll haul with us tomorrow.”

Goodsir does, in all but silence. Just a few days later, he is dead. Sol’s still bleeding. Hickey is distracted with Crozier, and his own apotheosis. He gathers them all as Christ did on the mount and hollers at them about his true nature. Keeping secrets, fucking indeed.

On an expedition in his youth to the far side of China, Solomon became close with the boatswain, Charleston, an older gent with a quiet way who taught the ship’s boys about the creatures that live in the sea. Being boys, they only wanted to hear about the fearsome ones, the horrible whales, great squids, and sharks, and so Charleston told them all about the time he had courted a lass in India. “We rambled upon the seaside many a night,” he said to them as they all huddled together in his cramped berth. “And I wanted to swim there, but nay, and now she told me that the water wasn’t safe for neither of us. I didn’t fathom then what she meant, until one night I coaxed her into it, you see. I took her hand and led her into the water, and her cloth -- the cloth they wear there, wrapped about them -- it was a lovely blue and gold, and it floated all about her. And we swam out together from the shore, and boys, one blink from me and that blue cloth was all that was left of her. Gone in a twinkle to a hungry shark.”

“Why didn’t it eat you, too, Mr. Charleston?” asked one of the boys. Not Solomon. He knew the answer.

“You’ll find, lads, that women, they get on their blood. Every full moon, a woman bleeds, and it draws in all manner of wild creatures.” He laughed then. “Us men, included.”

(How Sol would like for Charleston to see him now, schooled in seals, narwals, even crabs the old man could never have imagined. He is dead, no doubt, but all the same.)

When faced, at the hilltop, with Tuunbaq, here to kill them all, Solomon wonders if the beast has been tracking them by the smell of his monthly blood. The men have attributed the monster with all manner of intelligence, even strategy, but Sol is left to wonder if it’s far more simple than all of that. Tuunbaq has not been outsmarting them, merely following the scent of food, of a wounded animal.

Sol wonders all of this instead of running. He wonders this instead of fighting. He wonders it until he’s dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuckin transphobe hickey said crozier's a sissy beta ice-cuck
> 
> lost the thread on this one lads sorry


	5. 5.  Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, Captain, HMS Terror

Not that Francis had noticed, of course, not that he’d observed very closely, but the Marines on this expedition were a handsome lot. Were they typically this fine in form? Perhaps he’d had more pressing distractions on his outings before this. More likely, his captaincy had tightened his shoulders but loosened his eyes. If he’s assessing the men on his ship, after all, who will notice how long he looks?

The Corporal? A bit gaumless, maybe, but the Privates were pleasing enough, meaty and keen. That broad Private, the older one with his beard in, he reminded Francis of the man from his own youth who taught him to swim. Pity they wouldn't be docking anywhere the waters wouldn't freeze them to death. Another voyage, perhaps. (Only, he had promised, there will not be another voyage.)

On the subject of the Sergeant, however, Crozier found himself of several minds. Tozer visited with him before they shoved out, an introductory conversation with all the attendant awkwardness. Mr. Tozer seemed keen at the time to understand his place -- be taught his place, even, should it come to that, and be reminded of it -- and as Tozer settled into his command, Francis found himself at ease. Indeed, they seemed to despise the same people, which Francis has always considered the cornerstone of a firm friendship.

The first sea-year was a long one, made longer by the continued survival of the _Erebus_ Commander, whose name Crozier attempted to banish from his cabin. More than once, young Totson would attempt to breathe the word Fitzjames, only to find his jaw tapped shut by his Captain’s knuckles. “Unless he has resigned his position,” he once told the lad, “or fallen into the maw of a whale, I will not hear the ridiculous name of that carnival barker.” Yet still the talk of him, primarily by the very barker himself, persisted.

Perhaps once a fortnight that first year, he and Sergeant Tozer would sit together to converse on the doings of _Terror_ and her sister. Tozer believed that the ships were kept safe from pirates by the sight of the red coats of the Royal Marines. None would trifle with a vessel so well guarded. Crozier admired that youthful hardihood. They neither of them revealed much to each other about their true lives, but Crozier gathered the Sergeant’s was a scrabbled one that was dotted with hard women and lost brawls, and marked by an absence of God. It was no wonder to Francis that their conversations carried on with ease.

At Baffin Bay they all disembarked to enjoy firm land beneath their feet one final time before entering the labyrinth, and Francis excused himself from the social affair to search for Tom Blanky, conspicuously absent. Francis had hoped they might share a bottle of Irish in privacy together and allow their hands to roam. Captaincy might afford a man a large cabin, but Christ above!, any fellow who knocked expected entry. The rare occasions, only twice or perhaps three times, on this expedition he and Tom had built up a heat between them they’d been interrupted by some beardless lieutenant demanding to know what to do about some mouse or some piece of navigation, as though there weren’t fifty other men aboard who could be arsed to give them an answer. Lieutenant Irving, in particular, had an uncanny ear for the right moment. “Birdshit,” Tom had whispered as he and Francis struggled to right themselves after an urgent knock from the Lieutenant. “The little prick can hear a bit of sodomy from a hundred fucking leagues.”

“I think,” Francis whispered back, wheezing a laugh, “the Lord gives him a sign to alert him.”

“Right. If he wants a burning bush, I’ll oblige him.”

Francis had nearly toppled over trying to stifle the bark of his guffaw.

Now there was little merriment in Crozier’s heart. He did not believe in the cause of the Passage. He did not want to be on this voyage. His humor had grown black, his blood sluggish, and he wished to be at home. Sophia would put him to right. She would remove his epaulettes and wash the salt from his hair -- what was left of his hair -- and he would fall to his knees and go under her skirts and she would blossom for him as though he were the sun itself. This voyage would fail, of that he was sure, and the ships would turn to home embarrassed, except for Captain Crozier, who said doom from the start. He unstoppered the bottle in his hand and took a generous pull. Tom is what he needed presently, if only for an understanding ear.

Away from the men, it was mostly silent. The wind was low and so there was no whistle, and out on the water the great heaps of ice rode past one another in quiet ignorance. Even in the midst of a crowd, however, in the midst of a market square, Francis would know the sound of Tom Blanky’s laugh, that dirty little crow of a sound that spoke of triumph and challenge, always pushed through the teeth. In their moments together, that laugh had a way of making Francis feel caught, as though by a predator animal; a rabbit found out by a fox. It was thrilling. And now it seemed to come from the far side of a lean-to straight ahead of him.

Crozier hadn’t searched closely but he didn’t notice the absence of any other men at the gathering, which meant perhaps Tom had a local man with him, someone who might not mind an audience. Between the drink and the cold, Francis was in no state to join in, but it’s always a pleasure to watch Old Thomas work. Another burning pull from the bottle and Francis was near to panting in anticipation as he neared the lean-to. His steps were dampened by the grass, and anyway Tom had got to talking now, the way he does. Crozier’s got a mouth on him, too, as he’s been told, but there’s no one in the service could compare to Tom. Francis couldn’t make sense of the words yet, still too far away, but he was sure whoever the lad was, he was quite enjoying that depraved liturgy. He tried to think on some witticism he could spout upon rounding the corner to find them. Stroke of luck I’m not John Irving, perhaps, or, their hosts being whalers, something to do with a harpoon. It never came to him.

Upon closing in on the shack, Francis paused when he heard the men rustle against each other and exchange some words in sharp voices. It occurred to him this might not be amorous, but rather an argument, and to that, he would not want to be an audience. He stayed still in the grass and strained to listen, only to flinch in shock when their tussle knocked something to the ground that had been leaned against the wall: Crozier recognized it as a rifle. Cautiously he crept ahead, now concerned Tom might have got himself into trouble. It wouldn’t have been the first time under these conditions.

Closer still, he heard more chatter, enough to put him to ease that this wasn’t a fight. (Not, of course, that a fight has ever precluded a fuck, nor the other way round.) “There you are,” he heard Tom grumble. “Hotter’n a coal stove, you are.”

“Then warm your hands, I say.” That other voice was familiar. A man of _Terror_ ’s crew, indeed, and judging by the tone a younger one. Tom never did mind that, a tender, untested boy. Francis himself couldn’t abide much youth. He sought out the seasoned lads who’d been educated harshly on matters of discretion. Tom’s companion spoke again: “Fuck. Would this thing weren’t locked,” the thump of a fist or heel against the crumbling wood of the shelter, “so we could do this properly.”

“And what’s proper, my lad. Only I might traipse back to the camp and find an ax to break the blasted thing.”

“We’ll make do. Bloody fuck, I’m not losing your hand now, old master. We shall make do.”

“Could make better do with my tongue on this cock of yours.”

“So you could, and all. But I’ll not risk my cunny to frostbite, all so you can soak your beard in it, y’dog.”

“Ah, Sergeant, I’d never let it touch the air.”

There was more after that, laughter from both parties muffled by kisses, admonishments to keep quiet, but Francis had lost his focus. The voice, that other voice, he knew it now, just as he knew the rifle lying forgotten on the ground. His drink-sodden mind told him then that he was not welcome there; that place was the church of a god he didn’t know. Not a unique feeling, but a certain one. He stood on the spot, closing and gawping his numb lips, and then he turned and trotted back to camp.

Because of this, and the understanding, the clarity, that has bloomed since, it’s no surprise at all to Francis when the Sergeant joins arms with the cankerous insect Hickey. Here in the meager camp these men have made for themselves, Solomon has been assigned the role of valet: a demotion, if Crozier ever saw.

He and Tozer don’t get much time alone together, but Francis makes the most of the little they do. He speaks to him, tries to reason with him, tries to find a delicate way, a respectful way, to let Solomon know that he knows. He knows, and he has known for some time, and it has not led him to treat him any differently than he has the rest of the men in his care. He wants to tell this man, this lad, that they’re not very different from one another, each grappling with a tiger that no one else can see, examining every offhand joke from a friend for overtures of ridicule and rejection. But Francis knows that if he says these things outright, the Sergeant will want to know how, how did it happen, how did he find out, and then it would be a matter of disclosing the full truth, which will hurt them both. It isn’t right, Francis believes, to reduce a man to his component parts. Certainly not the parts he uses to piss.

(There have been other men like this, Francis knows, on other vessels. He has encountered them but ignored them. Let them be. He is neutral to the idea of women aboard ships: Indeed, he has seen some fine girl-sailors in his day, albeit mostly pirates. And if a woman wants to call herself a man, go to the trouble and strain of dressing like one, behaving and fighting like one, then that woman becomes a man, and it isn’t for any other sailor to counterspeak. If he was shocked by his discovery that evening at camp in the Bay, it was only on account that Solomon had hid himself so well til then. Francis has a suspicious eye for many things among the company of a ship, but that, that one trait, he had never considered a black spot upon a sailor’s character.)

Tozer is stone-faced, mostly, and Francis understands this, he truly does: Loyalty makes of one a dumb beast. If one’s master is cruel, then kindness from another chafes. Francis speaks kindly to Solomon, all the same. The extent of their conversation consists of an exchange while Hickey is up on the crest of that nearby hill, drawing in his rarefied breaths.

“Is he praying, do you think?” asks Francis.

“Can you -- I don’t think you can pray to yourself.”

“Then he’s attempting sainthood, then?”

“Well,” Tozer says, rubbing the wispy beard on his cheek, “you can’t be a saint until after you’ve died. Same for a martyr, and I don’t know about angels.”

Francis says, “I doubt it’s that.” They both laugh, equally humorless. “Sergeant, the other men are coming here for me. Join us when they do. Please.”

“No one’s coming for you, Captain.” Tozer isn’t looking at him. His eyes are fixed on the mountain. “I don’t want to die out here.”

“Nor I. And we don’t have to. That isn’t our guaranteed lot.” His hands are manacled, but he reaches them out to touch Solomon’s shoulder. “Let me help you.”

Here, Tozer turns his head to cast a glance down at Crozier’s hands, then looks him in the face. “Will we go home, do you think, after all of this? Will God let us go home?”

“No,” says Francis honestly, “I don’t. But we can survive here.”

“The way Fairholme survived, sir? That sort of survival, you mean?”

Francis closes his eyes. He had hoped the harsh conditions would breed forgiveness. Not so. He says, “Together, as a team of men, we shall fare better. I will make sure of it.”

Silence settles between them, and then Tozer turns his eyes back to the hilltop. He squints in to the sun. “Cornelius will ascend to godhood soon, it seems,” he says at last. “Or die in the pursuit of it. Either way, I prefer my odds with him.”

Francis breathes in the bracing arctic air and then breathes it out in a sigh. “Aye. Aye, lad.” If Little and the men arrive tonight, Francis will all but abduct Tozer to come along with them. He will keep the man safe, whatever the cost, and the rest of these scoundrels too. Leave Hickey to his self-worship; let him consume himself. Rescue will come for the rest of them. The men in this camp, such as it is, are here because they want to survive. Solomon, no doubt, has made many such hard and wicked and callous choices in his life to keep himself safe, to win the peace of passing among a crowd unmolested. Francis can protect that peace for him. He will. He scans the horizon one end to the other, knowing he will see a line of men trudging forward, ragged and tired, righteous and determined. Once more, to Solomon, he says the word, “Aye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know if you need anything


End file.
